A red thread (or strange encouragement)

This morning the Pierce family pulled out, in the tapering drizzle of a stormy night's downpour. We had a lovely team goodbye last night, a civilized candlelight dinner with stories and toasts, followed by some tributes and gifts and prayer. Annelise showed her draft-version slide show entitled "World's Hardest Mission", which sort of goes along with "Crisis School". In other words, it's been a long and challenging three years for them, and yet they are competent and compassionate people. If they barely made it through intact, what about Deus as new head teacher, or Scott who is stretching himself even further as a more-involved chairman of the board? As they pulled out, the last direct missionary supervisors of our very-much-central mission project, it is hard not to wonder, how hard will it now be without them? We all agree this is the right plan, God's timing, the next step, for them and for us. But at what cost?

An hour later we were in church, which due to aforementioned rain was off to a trickling slow start, so I was catching up on some Bible reading in Genesis, and as usual found encouragement in an unexpected chapter, 38. Many interesting things about this story, not the least of which is injustice and double standards and a woman's initiative. But this time through I was struck by the tenuous nature of the whole ancestry of Jesus. God's plan hung by a thread. Judah and his sons did not exactly behave in the most upstanding manner. The two older sons died and the younger seemed to wander off track, without any progeny. That left a foreign-born daughter-in-law, who had been shoved off back to her father for a decade or more, to risk her life to get an heir gestating. As she was about to be stoned, she produced the red cord, the staff and seal that proved the unborn baby's paternity. Then she could have easily died again delivering twins, a hand presentation in the pre-surgical era (or in Bundibugyo) is generally a death sentence. Again the red thread, this time marking the anticipated first-born, who subsequently gets pushed to the side by his brother Perez the true heir. Two red threads, representing a tenuous blood line, a fragile continuity.

God seems to purposely hang His plans on thin strands. We feel it right now, with the opening of the school year a week away, and so many unknowns about how this new arrangement of mission/school partnership will work. But I was encouraged by this story that God will finish the story the way He wants to, in a way that shows the power comes from Him and not from us. Both Scott and I know that the next six months will not be easy, and will not be what we had anticipated or hoped for our lives in 2010. That's good. There were other readings in the service, from Acts 21 and Mark 8. We humans tend to assume that if God is at work we should see victory; if danger and difficulty loom then it's time to retreat, something must be wrong. But Jesus told Peter that was Satan's logic, that His path led to the cross. And Paul said the same as he headed to Jerusalem. So, deep breath, here we go into 2010, with a slippery hold on a scarlet cord, the blood of Jesus. And hope that we'll look back and see themes of His presence and work in spite of everything.

Historic handover

A historic handover occurred this afternoon as the executive leadership of Christ School – Bundibugyo passed for the first time from the hands of a missionary, David Pierce, into the hands of a Ugandan, Tumwesigye Deus. Keys ceremoniously changed hands today, but the entire week has been spent carefully passing off financial processes, academic schedules, and administrative lists as well as discussing broader principles of discipline and leadership. As we wrapped our final loose ends in the office of the Head Teacher, Deus asked to share a few words. He quoted from Joshua 1:9 – “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and of good courage; do not be afraid, nor be dismayed, for the LORD your God is with you wherever you go.” He spoke these words as a send-off to David and as an encouragement to his two new Deputy Headmasters, Masereka Godfrey and Ajeku Robert. David and I (Scott) then laid hands on these men and prayed for them as they kneeled before us. While there are sure to be times when our school will live up to its nickname given by Rick Gray – Crisis School – my heart is peaceful that God has brought us the right man at the right time.

miniscule victories . .

My praise today is over a very small detail, in fact a moth-ish type dead bug.  Or rather it's removal.  We began rounds this morning confronted with a child in significant respiratory distress, the grandchild of a staff member, with a dozen or more concerned relatives all watching in anguish as this baby struggled, wide-eyed and tired, with a lung infection.  It took some serious effort to rouse the man-with-the-key to the generator, get it on so we had some temporary power, and retrieve the oxygen concentrator from maternity.  This is a machine that takes room air and puts out a low flow of enriched oxygen, and one of the MAIN reasons I'm excited about potentially connecting to power next week . . .anyway, the maternity staff told me sadly that it's not working anymore.  Meanwhile the baby's mom was sobbing the death wail, sure her child was dying.  So me-of-minimal-mechanical know-how (where is Luke when you need him) plugged it in and started fiddling with buttons and switches.  Just when we're on the brink of electricity it would be so like Bundibugyo for the oxygen concentrator to die.  I found that the flow meter shot up when I began to unscrew one of the fittings where the tubing to the patient is supposed to attach, and by a process of trial and error determined the connector was plugged.  Every-ready nurse Heidi handed me a needle, and I poked around in the hole and sure enough, the aforementioned dead moth was extracted.  After which oxygen did, indeed, flow.  And the patient closed his panicked eyes and fell asleep in his mom's arms.

And a victory that I hesitate to celebrate quite yet, but may be more than miniscule.  For months I've been struggling with the district, the lab, the blood bank, the clinical research center in Fort Portal, various staff, anyone who would listen, to get a workable system in place for ensuring a steady flow of blood for transfusion, and prompt delivery of some samples and results from Fort Portal.  I've had the royal run-around. So today I invited our DHO (head of everything for health in Bundibugyo), the in-charges of the two main labs, a CRS representative who was supposedly funding the non-existent transport, and all our staff to a meeting.  It started two hours or more late.  It required tedious listing of all the history and details.  It veered off several times into unsolvable dilemmas.  But praise God, thanks to having everyone in one spot and thanks to the clear thinking and selfless suggestion of Moses from the lab, we made a multi-party agreement of a new system that we all think will actually WORK.  There is nothing more tiring than making phone call after phone call and getting vague excuses and knowing money is being embezzled while anemic children are dying.  So I am very thankful for everyone's effort today and hopeful for the future.

Thirdly, there was quite a hubub in Nyahuka last night, including two gun shots and a lot of shouting.  It turned out to be police scattering a mob who had caught a rapist in the act of harming a 12 year old girl, a well-known business man who is suspected to have AIDS.  Praising God for tough justice, for our new in-charge officer who seems to be taking this seriously.  About two hundred people were on the road around the station this morning to make sure the man was carted off to jail and not allowed to bribe his way out.  Encouraging to see people on the side of the victim, at least for now.

And last but not least, the national paper ranked ALL secondary schools today.  There were 2,231.  They were published in order of best to worst, based on exam results.  Christ School Bundibugyo ranked 403--that puts us in the top 20% (or you could look at it as the 82nd percentile) in the country.  The next best Bundi schools were below 1700 on the list (bottom quarter).  Maybe another decade to the top 10%, but given what we have to work with, pretty amazing to be where we are.

This post is a bit of a pep talk . . long week of emerging from illness and struggling with discouragement.  Good lessons from the rich book of Job:  keep engaged with God, stop trying to control the world because God is doing a much better job (God never explains much to Job, other than to show him His greatness), and pray for your friends no matter what, even if they criticize you.  At long last, trying to take those lessons to heart, and as I do, seeing God's power and mercy from dead bugs to apprehended criminals to improbable political victories.

TCK's

First, I should say that the sobering, unimaginably horrible daily news from Haiti puts all our troubles in perspective.  It feels somehow dishonest to be blogging about transitions and exams in a world in which 50 thousand bodies are piled up on an island, unknown and unsung, for mass burial.

And then I should say that this line of thinking was, indirectly, brought to my heart by a TCK (third culture kid) I know.  His PE class was studying stress, and they took a quiz in which they answered questions about stressful events in their lives recently (separations, hospitalizations, deaths, losses).  The exercise then gave them a prediction of their chances of being stricken with a serious illness in the next year due to stress.  My informant scored 80% chance, highest in his group.  However, that did not phase him.  What he took away from the experience was this:  if I scored 80%, what would my friends at home score?  What about my neighbor, a kid my age, an orphan, who this weekend buried his step-brother who died of AIDS, who lives shuttled between relatives, whose other brother has basically stolen his dad's land?  

Good point.  There are many, many hardships of growing up between cultures, not the least of which is the fact that you never quite fit in anywhere.  And as we've prayed for Naomi and Quinn this week the reality of being a kid whose world changes so drastically as parents move on has been very acute.  However, there is the strength of knowing first-hand how others live, of looking through statistics to see faces, and of putting your own life into a world-wide perspective is priceless.  I remember my kids talking about an estimation question on an Iowa test: the topic was percentages, and they had categories like "talk on the phone" and "flown on an airplane".  And in their minds, the answers were tiny, because they see the large denominator of the world.

So today let me pause from complaining, remember the families who are sleeping under tarps and searching for drinkable water and threatened by anarchic gang violence in the country that was Haiti, and pray for their rescue and restoration.

bearer of bad news

Uganda, catapulting into the 21rst century, introduced a new service:  receive national exam results by sms.  So the over half-a-million 12 to 15 year olds who finished primary school at the end of 2009 and sat for their all-important Primary Leaving Exam (PLE) could send an sms this morning with their exam number, and receive instant results.  Great news for many kids who performed well (including the late Dr. Jonah's two daughters supported by the Kule Family Care Fund in their Kampala school, with excellent results).  There are four half-day exams in four subject areas:  English, Science, Math, and Social Studies.  1 is the best score, 9 is a failure (low # = good, high # = bad).  So the best possible outcome is an aggregate of 4.  The worst would be an aggregate of 36.  When WHM started Christ School, Bundibugyo ranked at the very bottom of all districts, and our first classes of CSB comprised students with scores in the mid-20's (and above).  Last year we had made our way down to the low and mid teens, a decade of improvement, and we are no longer listed in the papers among the five worst districts.  Still we have far to go here, there are many top secondary schools in Kampala who only take students with perfect scores of aggregate 4, or maybe 5, while we would be HAPPY to get someone with a 12, and usually settle for 14-18.  In the paper I learned today that thanks to the Universal Primary and Secondary Education schemes, there are 916 government-aided secondary schools in Uganda which are supposed to absorb 390,000 new pupils (that's over 400 per school, which sounds frightening, since they will probably be in at most 2 or 3 classrooms).  The 3,000-some private schools will take the other 120,000 (40 per class, a bit more realistic).

That is a long background to say that the instant sms system is a lot less fun when the student cries.  One of Jack's good friends, to whom we leant study aids, had at our house a lot over the last year, and really pulled for, scored a 27.  It isn't a failure, but it is a LONG way from his dreams.  He's a complete orphan, no mom, no dad (both died of AIDS), in a public crowded chaotic school (one where our kids attended briefly years ago) across the street, 15 years old, pleasant and conversant in English and an all-around nice guy.  But the PLE is the final word on whether, or where, one continues in school.  It is the sole number which dictates the future.  And this number tells him that his future is not at Christ School, where he longed to join his biological brother as well as my kids and his other friends.  My mom-heart felt heavy giving handing my phone over to this boy today.  Like many, many kids in Bundibugyo, he will probably struggle on in mediocrity, in a sub-standard secondary school with poor discipline and unmotivated staff.  My words that God was still good and in control of his life felt hollow as he held back his tears.  

Prenatal care, stable families, good early nutrition, protein, iron . . . stimulating nursery and early elementary schools, reading material, interested adults, an organized life, protection from disease . . . there are so many steps before the PLE that stand stacked against this kid and many others, that I know we have to take a generational long-view . . but that's small consolation to today's sad student.

Handover

Prayers appreciated this week for the Pierces, Scott, and our new Head Teacher Deus, as well as accountant Loy and deputies Godfrey and Ejeku.  Since CSB was founded over ten years ago the intention was to establish a fully Ugandan staff, with the mission providing ongoing vision and support and continuity.  The Barts ran the warm-up and then the first eight laps of that marathon, then there was a transfer ninth lap, and the Pierces have run two more strenuous rounds on their own.  By Friday, the baton should, at last, be in the hands of Deus.  So much work and prayer has led to this point . . .and yet the work and prayer to follow seem even greater.  Many closures are merely steps through a door into a whole new set of corridors.  David and Annelise are investing tremendous effort to tie up loose ends on policies, funds, staff, and schedules, use of property, down to the adequacy of the furniture and design of the renovated library space.  For them this is a bittersweet time of completing the calling they heard God give them, and moving on to find their next direction in life.  Scott needs to establish solid rapport with the new leadership team.  For them it is a challenging but potential-filled time of beginning in new working relationships.  And all needs to be ready for the return of the full staff next week, and the students the week after.  Not so that we can have a perfect school, we are far from that, but so that CSB can continue to be a Kingdom outpost, a plot of holy territory where rules and love both matter, where girls are safe, where lessons are actually taught, where God's creation is respected, where the Gospel is clearly heard and seen, where prayer changes hearts, where lives are set in directions that will ultimately transform Bundibugyo.  If that depended upon us, we would despair, but we settle in for the next term, expecting God to show up in new and clear and rescuing ways, bringing PEACE to our tumultuous hearts.  

In case of any illusions . . .

 . . . this is, still, and desperately so, enemy territory.  After about a month of a string of irritating minor infections, the bone-rattling teeth-clattering muscle-aching chills of a major fever hit last night, and I barely even opened my eyes until it was 2 pm and the rest of the family was home from church, having abandoned all responsibility to Scott (who is praying that he will somehow, miraculously, for the sake of the rest of us, be spared).  I did open my eyes once though, in the early morning, when piercing shrieks and rising wails erupted next door, the highly effective all-come-running distress call of the bereaved.  Scott rolled out of bed and went over to find out that a son of our late neighbor John Mukiddi had died overnight in Bundibugyo Hospital, and they had just brought the body, a young man whom we did not personally know, not sure of what causes. The inevitable tinny-amplified music of the all-night prep for burial gathering is just starting up now, at dusk, to blare outside our screened bedroom window  And last night, our houseworker called in a somewhat disinhibited state, to report the success of his attempt to retrieve his wife.  She had been understandably miffed when his brother attacked her with a machete a few days ago, saved by her teenage sun, in a brawl in which our friend suffered a big bruising shiner of an eye.  Sickness, death of the young, alcoholism, violence, marriage strain . . sometimes the very holding together of this place seems so tenuous.  Lord, have mercy.

Week-in-Review . . .

Saturday, the friendly American-suburb buzz of the Clark's lawn mower, glad to have our neighbors back from their trip to the USA, the thud of a football as Jack and a friend kick around outside, the hum of insects, bright sun, a slight breeze.  End of the week of coming home, and finally all unpacked.  Earlier today we helped haul a truck-load of Pierce give-away items to various mission homes (not ours, we have PLENTY, though I did snag a box of precious ziplock bags).  Annelise has now opened, organized, and closed two homes here, which is no small feat in three-plus years.  We are thankful for their willingness to sift and sort through a decade or more of accumulated junk they inherited (or more accurately bought sight unseen), a process I dread.  They look tired, and I feel both their good-bye weariness and the anticipation of our own.  Between the lawnmower and the yard-sale aspect of the clear-out, and Scott working on financial aid documents for college due soon, it feels peculiarly un-Africa today.

A few memories of the last few days . . 

The eclipse Friday was rather a let-down for us in Bundi.  We were in the path of the spectacular annular eclipse, where the moon blocks the center of the sun and leaves a ring of fire, a once-in-a-millenium event, and I'm sure it did happen right on our early morning mountain-fringed horizon.  But the sky was so occluded by oppressive grey clouds that I sat out in the yard with the kids peering at the theoretical dawn and sipping coffee, waiting, as it passed by nearly unnoticed.  Friends later said they knew the moon was fighting with the sun (the local phraseology for such an event) but I highly suspected them of hearing it on the radio.  The dim morning perhaps deepened slightly dimmer, and a flock of six horn-bills did land rather apocalyptically in our tree, but that was about it.  Luke and Caleb had better views in Kenya.

More exciting, the Africa Cup of Nations football tournament in Angola.  Friday evening I let the word out that we'd be watching Ghana-Ivory Coast, and sure enough most of our sponsored student - friends, about 7 boys, showed up for a pleasant dinner, conversation, and viewing.  Mostly I liked the atmosphere, watching Africans play in Africa with African boys who are avid fans and players themselves, particularly the inspiring advertisements on our South African Supersport cable channel, creative and proud, touting the glories of African football.  It is not often that we see positive images of Africa in the media.  I was pulling for Ghana, recognizing some of the brave young men who took the under-20 World Cup trophy earlier this year, but alas they lost to the heavily professional Ivory Coast team.  All in all, though, very fun.

The ward, as always, a mix of tragedy and triumph.  Greeted by little Bhitigale, whom I never expected to see live, now round-faced and smiley with his cantankerous grandmother.  Picked up a chart on a new patient and saw my handwriting going back to 2005, when we diagnosed sickle cell, and now this baby was a thriving ready-for-nursery-school age girl.  But the same morning another infant died within a few hours of arrival, too little too late as the parents had been trying various treatments at home.  The pile-up of kids whom I've not seen for the last two weeks plus Christmas, the inevitable struggles, phone calls, advocacy.  News of a nation-wide blood shortage as malarial levels increase in the unseasonable dampness and the usual donor source (schools) is closed for holidays.

Thankful for our younger two, who sang praise songs all the way home, waving, content, happy to be back.  Thankful for our cows, our dog . . . and today the gift of a rooster, a rather impressive fellow, who will become dinner sometime this week.  

Battling roaches, Julia and I vigorously clean out two shelves of tupperware and find one of their hiding places in dark, nested lids.  Yuck.  Welcome home.

Jack and Julia are having a blast at Rwenzori Adventure Training School, i.e. RATS, the January-term for RMS.  I worried about over-taxing Miss Anna, but she has been delightfully creative and energetic.  They learned about cocoa processing locally, went to the river, caught fruit flies on a ripe papaya, and are keeping nature journals.  Sort of science and entertainment wrapped into one.  

Long walk with Heidi, reconnecting, friendship, team.  And particularly an evening with Scott Will and one of our med students Baluku Morris.  I declared the dinner conversation topic to be memories of family, so that Scott could talk about a dear aunt who died last week in the US, a heavy loss for him, here with no one to share it.  Baluku talked about his hard-working grandfather who managed to send his kids to good schools by raising CABBAGES, which must have been a lot of cabbage, because they are cheap.  And I got to share stories about my Dad, in a good and thankful way.  It was a holy evening to share food and acknowledge the many ancestors who have brought us to this point, made us who we are.

The Tension of Home

As we are progressing through the Gospel of John as a team, this week we came to chapter 14 . . . and as we are about to say goodbye to the Pierces, the latest in a 16-year-string of goodbyes, and dialoguing with the packing Johnsons who will leave America and join us this month after their own trial of goodbyes, it was a good chapter to come to.  Because in this chapter Jesus is saying goodbye to His closest friends, too, and He deals with some very key missionary themes of home and help and connection to God.  First we get a concrete glimpse of our true home, the many mansions, diverse and spacious and prepared just for us.  Since we find our Bundibugyo homes crawling with roaches or smelling of mold after even two weeks away . . the idea of someone going ahead and getting things ready is very appealing.  Whenever we study the topic of home, however, a tension arises for me.  There is such a strong theme through the Bible of pilgrimage, that we are strangers, sojourners, travelers, moving through this world where we don't quite belong.  When we are reminded of this, there is a two-fold encouragement, to give us patience with all the things that are less than ideal, and giving us a vision of a final destination.  On a journey we don't expect everything to be just like home, and we look forward to getting back.  We can put up with a lot.

But though we are pilgrims and strangers, we also make homes wherever we go, and in their best moments those homes are a foretaste of Heaven.  When we sense belonging, when we connect in community, when we surround ourselves with beauty and peace, when we sit down to good food, laughter, and music, these are all glimpses of the true home to which we journey.  And so it is legitimate, even honorable, a high-calling this homemaking, to rest our souls and bodies in the early realities of eternity.

And that always leaves us with a tension:  accepting our foreignness, not just to Uganda but to Earth, while simultaneously entering into the community and creativity of carving out a home.  Another paradox, being settled travelers, home-body sojourners.  Ready to leave, content to stay.  Always weighing how much energy to put into homemaking, and how much to reserve for the inevitable moving, be that across continents or into eternity.

We live in transition, all of us, caught between the paradise of Eden and the paradise-to-come of a New Heavens and New Earth.  That truth helps my heart obey the command in John 14:  let not your hearts be troubled.  Transition is not surprising.  It is the atmosphere in which we dwell, and we will never completely get past it in this life.  Jesus knew that, and He gave us a short picture of the goal, and then lots of promises.  God is not just waiting for us to reach Heaven, He has come into time and space, so that there is a constant back and forth as we pray, and the Spirit comes, we believe, and He acts, a shuttling growing connection that sustains us and draws us homeward.  And the glories of the chapter are bookended by two sober realities:  we are sinners, limited people, who will blow it a lot of the time, even when it is really crucial that we have faith (see end of chapter 13, Jesus is saying all these great things to people who are about to desert him) . . . and the Ruler of this World fights us tooth and nail (end of chapter 14).  I like that the promises of home and love and Spirit-led-power fall right smack in the middle of the reality of sin and Satan.

I wish I could put my arms around my team mates, my kids, my mother, my friends, protect all of us from the pain of transition. . .instead I can only share it, and go to John 14 together, to our choice of not-troubled and to God's gift of peace.

Echos of Job

Job amazes me anew every time I read the book, a character whose brutal honesty, poetic lyricism, stubborn faith, and determination to pursue relationship with a God whom he does not understand, inspire.  While his friends insist on a zero-sum universe, an explanation of all that happens in an anthropocentric matrix of good-deserves-good bad-deserves-bad reward and punishment, Job relentlessly speaks the truth:  life does not always appear to work that neatly.  In chapters 9 and 13, after numerous rounds of debate, sometimes speaking to his friends but more often to God, he sums up his prayer in two points:  withdraw Your hand far from me (Let Him take his rod away from me) . . . Let not the dread of You make me afraid (do not let dread of Him terrify me).  Reflecting on this two-fold prayer, it seems to mirror the Gethsemane prayer of Jesus: take the cup away, but your will be done.  In other words, pray first for relief, deliverance, rescue, because that's the child-like cry of the heart in a difficult place, the place of loss, grief, scabbing skin or impending execution.  Even though we know intellectually that God works through difficulty, it is OK to be like Job and Jesus and say, please, stop, I've had enough.  But that prayer is balanced by the second half, the prayer that relationship trumps getting my way.  The prayer that we would not be separated, afraid.  The prayer that we would not choose relief at the expense of choosing God's presence.  After asking for what we want (help!), the request is couched in the deeper desire that God's will prevail, that His ways are preferable to easy ways when a choice has to be made.

Wednesday we awoke to our own home in Bundibugyo for the first time in just over two weeks, after a full journey of everything from baptisms to bungee, reunions and goodbyes, three countries and 9 different places to stay from  tents, to homes, to African bandas, to a hotel.  As good as it is to be home, it is hard, too, to re-enter the reality of this place. Bundibugyo is sort of a Job nursery-school,  the small abc's of suffering, not the crux of the entire God-Satan conflict, but an outpost where minor players can find plenty of testing.  We're not dying of anything wildly tropical on the disease front, but fighting off draggy infections and minor injuries that discourage with their persistence.  We have four live-and-well kids, but two of them are far, far away and the year holds more separation than time together.  We're not outcast from our community, but every step forward requires effort and push.  We have not been devastated by economic disaster, but life is not all smooth and comfortable.  So it was good for the timing of return to fall on a weekly early morning prayer meeting, and we prayed like Job, pouring out our sorrows over things we wish God would change (deaths on the Paeds ward, illness on the team, crises at school, demanding dependent acquaintances who knock early and late for help, people we miss, looming transitions, countdowns to goodbyes, uncertainty).  But then we turned to the second part of the prayer, asking God to be present no matter what the answer to all our petitions, to draw us close, to give us faith to walk without terror in His paths.